Former Auburn assistant Will Friend will remain in the SEC West after all.

A day after Friend was reportedly set to join the staff at Memphis as offensive line coach, Mississippi State announced it has hired Friend for a role on new coach Zach Arnett’s staff. According to Mississippi State, Friend’s exact title will be determined at a later date.

Read more Auburn football: Auburn swiftly making strides with long-overdue overhaul along offensive line

Auburn adds another transfer OT, pulls Gunner Britton from Western Kentucky

Auburn football 2023 projected scholarship chart

In the meantime, Friend’s move to Mississippi State provides a homecoming of sorts for the Philadelphia, Miss., native. Friend grew up 60 miles from Mississippi State’s campus. Mississippi State will be the fifth SEC school Friend has worked at, joining Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina — though his stint with the Gamecocks lasted just two weeks at the end of the 2020 season before he was hired at Auburn.

“We’re excited to welcome Will Friend back to his home state,” Arnett said in a release. “Will is an outstanding coach with a proven record of recruiting and developing players on the offensive side of the ball in the toughest conference in the sport. He knows the SEC inside and out from being a player and a coach and will be another great addition to our staff.”

Friend spent the last two seasons on staff at Auburn, where he was hired by then-Tigers coach Bryan Harsin as offensive line coach when he took over the program after the 2020 season. Friend also served as Auburn’s interim co-offensive coordinator during the final month of the 2022 season after Harsin was fired. Friend shared that title with Ike Hilliard under interim coach Cadillac Williams.

Friend was not retained by new Auburn coach Hugh Freeze as part of his inaugural staff on the Plains. Friend’s original two-year deal at Auburn, which paid him $700,000 annually, is set to expire later this month.

“My family and I couldn’t be more excited to join the Mississippi State family,” Friend said in a release. “I want to thank Coach Arnett for this incredible opportunity. The state of Mississippi is home for me, and the talent it produces is second to none. I can’t wait to develop relationships with our players and get right to work.”

Friend is the latest former Auburn assistant to land a new role. Former linebackers coach Christian Robinson was named inside linebackers coach at Baylor recently, while former Auburn edge coach and special teams coordinator Roc Bellantoni was hired as defensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic after not being retained by Freeze.

Friend, a former four-year starting offensive lineman at Alabama, has more than two decades of coaching experience and, according to football analytics site College Football Matrix, he has been a top-20 percent graded offensive line coach nationally over the last 15 years. After starting his career at West Alabama in 2001, Friend spent a year as a high school assistant in Tuscaloosa. That was followed by two years as a graduate assistant at Georgia before serving as offensive line coach at Gardner-Webb from 2005-06.

Friend then spent four seasons as UAB’s offensive line coach before returning to Georgia as the Bulldogs’ offensive line coach. Friend served in that role for Georgia for three seasons, adding the title of run game coordinator in 2013. In 2015, he was named offensive coordinator at Colorado State, where he worked for three seasons before returning to the SEC as Tennessee’s offensive line coach from 2018-20.

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.